Ohio Birds: A Photo Collection

Just "click on the thumbnails" for successively larger images--small, medium, and HUGE!

Cooper's Hawk on Nest

Cooper's Hawk- Accipiter cooperii

Cooper's Hawk-Accipiter cooperii, Order FALCONIFORMES - Family ACCIPITRIDAE - Subfamily Accipitrinae. I saw a pair of these remarkable raptors with my friend Mark McPhail in his backyard (heavily wooded) in Oxford, Ohio earlier in the spring. Since then, they have mated and built a nest! They hunt for prey in the woods (a True Forest Hawk) and often injure themselves. A recent study found that 23 percent of all Cooper's Hawks examined had healed fractures in the bones of the chest, especially of the furcula or wishbone. A winter resident. At the first molt, young birds frequently are bluish-grey in coloration. Length 14-20 inches. (Photo: April 8, 2004, Canon 10D, EF 400mm f/5.6L USM, 1.4x teleconverter EF ll lens )

Sources of species identification and other amazing info include (1) Cornell Lab of Ornithology--a fantastic site; (2)Birds of Eastern and Central North America, Peterson Field Guide Series, Fifth Edition, Houghton Mifflin Company; (3) The National Audubon Society's Sibley Guide to Birds and (4) Field Guide to the Birds of North America, Third Edition, National Geographic, Washington, D.C.